Internalism about a person’s good: don’t believe it

Internalism about a person’s good is roughly the view that in order for something to intrinsically enhance a person’s well-being, that person must be capable of caring about that thing. I argue in this paper that internalism about a person’s good should not be believed. Though many philosophers accept the view, Connie Rosati provides the most comprehensive case in favor of it. Her defense of the view consists mainly in offering five independent arguments to think that at least some form of internalism about one’s good is true. But I argue that, on closer inspection, not one of these arguments succeeds. The problems don’t end there, however. While Rosati offers good reasons to think that what she calls ‘two-tier internalism’ would be the best way to formulate the intuition behind internalism about one’s good, I argue that two-tier internalism is actually false. In particular, the problem is that no substantive theory of well-being is consistent with two-tier internalism. Accordingly, there is reason to think that even the best version of internalism about one’s good is in fact false. Thus, I conclude, the prospects for internalism about a person’s good do not look promising.     

?The person is a monad with windows?: sketch of a conceptual history of ‘person’ in Russia

The basic concepts ??person?? (Person), I/self (Ich) and ??subject?? (Subjekt) structuring the Russian discourse of personhood (Personalit?t) developed during the philosophical discussions of the 1820s?C1840s. The development occurred in the course of an intense reception of German Idealism and Romanticism. Characteristic of this process is that the modern meaning of personhood going back to the theological and natural-law interpretations of the person in Western Europe does not exist in the Russian cultural consciousness. Therefore the Russian concepts of personhood demonstrate the influence of the semantic innovations of Romanticism. Correspondingly, the semantic core of the Russian discourses on personhood is not the idea of an ??autonomous person?? but that of an ??unique individuality??. Here, personhood is not the indefeasible attribute of every man, but the mark of inimitable individuality. Accordingly, the basic distinction underlying the discourse on personhood in Russia is not the differentiation between ??person?? and ??thing?? as in the European tradition, but the distinction between ??individual?? and (anonymous) ??community??. Also, in the meaning of the concept of I/self the dominant differentiation is not that between I/self (Ich) and not-I/not-self (Nicht-Ich), but that between I and We. This discourse on personhood centring on the idea of individuality took form in Russia starting in the middle of the nineteenth century, in particular in aesthetics, psychology, and educational theory, as well as in the philosophy of history. The comparative intercultural analysis of the history of concepts pertaining to personhood in the German-Russian cultural transfer brings to light the dialectic of European modernity in which a degree of tension is visible between the idea of personal autonomy and individuality.     

Orientations and motivations: Are you a “people person,” a “thing person,” or both?

Previous theory and research suggests that individuals selectively orient primarily toward the social environment (people) or toward the physical environment (things). These orientations can be conceptualized as motivation-based complexes that influence personal preferences and interests, with consequences for important life choices. This paper examined differential orientation in two studies, one with university students and another with children. Person-thing Orientation showed sex differences and was related to occupational choices in both age groups. For university students person-thing interests were linked to academic majors, and retention within programs focused on things (e.g., science and engineering). Sex differences were greater for TO than PO, but not for students majoring in engineering. Sex differences in selective orientations to the social and physical environments were similar in children (3rd and 6th grade) and university students, suggesting processes may be underway early and may be consequential for sex differences in interests and career trajectories for STEM.     

What you don’t know can’t hurt you: realism and the unconceived

Two of the most potent challenges faced by scientific realism are the underdetermination of theories by data, and the pessimistic induction based on theories previously held to be true, but subsequently acknowledged as false. Recently, Stanford (2006, Exceeding our grasp: Science, history, and the problem of unconceived alternatives. Oxford: Oxford University Press) has formulated what he calls the problem of unconceived alternatives: a version of the underdetermination thesis combined with a historical argument of the same form as the pessimistic induction. In this paper, I contend that while Stanford does present a novel antirealist argument, a successful response to the pessimistic induction would likewise defuse the problem of unconceived alternatives, and that a more selective and sophisticated realism than that which he allows is arguably immune to both concerns.

‘It’s silly these doors don’t open’: a six-year-old girl emerges from a chronic state of emotional withdrawal

This clinical paper explores the way in which the first two years of a long-term psychotherapy helped six-year-old Anna to lessen her retreat into a chronic withdrawn emotional state. Over the course of the first year she would occasionally pick up the fridge from the doll’s house and try to open the doors, but because the fridge was actually a block of wood the doors could not open. In treatment, this inquiry came to represent the difficulties of engaging and making contact with a baby who found it very hard to feed. The author describes how, as Anna entered into a therapeutic relationship, it slowly became clear that there was an inner world jam-packed with persecutory anxieties and a family history of unmourned loss and trauma. Through fear Anna slammed the doors to her mind – to knowing herself – and by not feeding, Anna starved herself of opportunities for mental growth. It took some time for her to state, “it’s silly these doors don’t open, they should”. In the discussion of this clinical material the author draws on the work of Francis Tustin, Alessandra Piontelli and Marguerite Reid to consider the link between intergenerational and prenatal trauma and subsequent emotional disturbance in the child.     

What skilled typists don’t know about the QWERTY keyboard

We conducted four experiments to investigate skilled typists’ explicit knowledge of the locations of keys on the QWERTY keyboard, with three procedures: free recall (Exp.?1), cued recall (Exp.?2), and recognition (Exp.?3). We found that skilled typists’ explicit knowledge of key locations is incomplete and inaccurate. The findings are consistent with theories of skilled performance and automaticity that associate implicit knowledge with skilled performance and explicit knowledge with novice performance. In Experiment?4, we investigated whether novice typists acquire more complete explicit knowledge of key locations when learning to touch-type. We had skilled QWERTY typists complete a Dvorak touch-typing tutorial. We then tested their explicit knowledge of the Dvorak and QWERTY key locations with the free recall task. We found no difference in explicit knowledge of the two keyboards, suggesting that typists know little about key locations on the keyboard, whether they are exposed to the keyboard for 2 h or 12 years.     

Why we don’t deserve credit for everything we know

A view of knowledge—what I call the Deserving Credit View of Knowledge(DCVK)—found in much of the recent epistemological literature, particularly among so-called virtue epistemologists, centres around the thesis that knowledge is something for which a subject deserves credit. Indeed, this is said to be the central difference between those true beliefs that qualify as knowledge and those that are true merely by luck—the former, unlike the latter, are achievements of the subject and are thereby creditable to her. Moreover, it is often further noted that deserving credit is what explains the additional value that knowledge has over merely lucky true belief. In this paper, I argue that the general conception of knowledge found in the DCVK is fundamentally incorrect. In particular, I show that deserving credit cannot be what distinguishes knowledge from merely lucky true belief since knowledge is not something for which a subject always deserves credit.     

In defence of a perspectival semantics for ‘know’

Relativism offers an ingenious way of accommodating most of our intuitions about ‘know’: the truth-value of sentences containing ‘know’ is a function of parameters determined by a context of use and a context of assessment. This sort of double-indexing provides a more adequate account of the linguistic data involving ‘know’ than does standard contextualism. However, relativism has come under recent attack: it supposedly cannot account for the factivity of ‘know’, and it entails, counterintuitively, that circumstances of evaluation have features that cannot be shifted by any intensional operator. I offer replies to these objections on behalf of the relativist. I then argue that a version of contextualism can account for the same data as relativism without relativizing sentence truth to contexts of assessment. This version of contextualism is thus preferable to relativism on methodological grounds.     

“We Didn’t Know”: Silence and Silencing in Organizations

This article examines the dynamic processes within organizations that contribute to systemic silence and silencing and the “we didn’t know” defense, particularly for those groups in which secrecy replaces transparency to the detriment of the organization and its members. The events of the past more than 10 years within the American Psychological Association (APA) surrounding the role of psychologists in interrogation of detainees, including advising on and monitoring interrogations that have been construed as torture, will serve as a case example of the systemic forces that may contribute to leading an organization away from its principal mission. I explore how what was done was turned into its opposite. That is: “We are protecting psychologists by providing them with ethical guidelines in detention centers with detainees” became the explanatory rubric for a position that violated the association’s stated mission and exposed the organization and individual members to public shame. In addition, I explore how self-silencing becomes a way of adapting to a culture that censures dissent.     

“I didn’t understand their system,and I didn’t know what to do”: Migrant Parents’ Experiences of Mandated Therapy for Their Children

In this phenomenological study, we explored the experiences of migrant parents whose children received mandated therapy in Southern California. Migrants are people who move to a host country either voluntarily as immigrants or involuntarily as refugees. Mandated therapy means that the school or court system required that their children receive services from a mental health provider. Parents often participated by having to take parenting classes and join in some sessions with their children; however, the children were the identified clients. We conducted eight, in-depth interviews with migrant parents. We employed Giorgi and Giorgi’s (Qualitative research in psychology: expanding perspectives in methodology and design. American Psychological Association, Washington, 2003; Qualitative psychology: a practical guide to research methods. Sage, London, 2008) phenomenological psychological research approach to analyze data. Analysis revealed four constituents, which are overarching themes related to the essential structure of the shared phenomenon: (a) migrant parents encountered discrimination and devaluation; (b) migrant parents experienced increased exposure to US culture and the mental health system, which accelerated acculturation; (c) the degree of cultural sensitivity exhibited by providers both positively and negatively influenced participants’ attitudes and perceptions toward mental health services; and (d) migrant parents used their mandated therapy experiences as opportunities to examine their family relationships and to learn new skills and concepts.     

Becoming a person—Part II

Conclusion I have tried to tell you what has seemed to occur in the lives of people with whom I have had the privilege of being in a relationship as they struggled toward becoming themselves. I have endeavored to describe, as accurately as I can, the meanings which seem to be involved in this process of becoming a person. I am sure that I do not see it clearly or completely, since I keep changing in my comprehension and understanding of it. I hope you will accept it as a current and tentative picture, not as something final.One reason for stressing the tentative nature of what I have said is that I wish to make it clear that I amnot saying: This is what you should become; here is the goal for you. Rather, I am saying that these are some of the meanings I see in the experiences that my clients and I have shared. Perhaps this picture of the experience of others may illuminate or give more meaning to some of your own experience.I have pointed out that the individual appears to have a strong desire to become himself; that given a favorable psychological climate he drops the defensive masks with which he has faced life, and begins to discover and to experience the stranger who lives behind these masks—the hidden parts of himself. I have pictured some of the attributes of the person who emerges—the tendency, to be more open to all elements of his organic experience; the growth of trust in one's organism as an instrument of sensitive living; the acceptance of the fearsome responsibility of being a unique person; and finally the sense of living in one's life as a participant in a fluid, ongoing process, continually discovering new aspects of one's self in the flow of experience. These are some of the things which seem to me to be involved in becoming a person.     

The consequences for memory of imagining in another person’s voice

Subjects listened to and imagined words and then attempted to discriminate words they had heard from words they had imagined. Discrimination was better when subjects imagined themselves saying the words (Experiments 1 and 2) than when subjects imagined the words in the speaker’s voice. Subjects also had more difficulty discriminating imagined from perceived words when they imagined in the speaker’s voice than when they imagined words in a voice other than their own or the speaker’s (Experiment 1). The results are consistent with the idea that reality monitoring is affected by the degree of similarity in sensory characteristics of memories derived from perception and from imagination (Johnson & Raye, 1981).     

‘So people know I'm a Sikh’: Narratives of Sikh masculinities in contemporary Britain

This article examines British-born Sikh men's identification to Sikhism. In particular, it focuses on the appropriation and use of Sikh symbols amongst men who define themselves as Sikh. This article suggests that whilst there are multiple ways of ‘being’ a Sikh man in contemporary post-colonial Britain, and marking belonging to the Sikh faith, there is also a collectively understood idea of what an ‘ideal’ Sikh man should be. Drawing upon Connell and Messerschmidt's discussion of locally specific hegemonic masculinities (2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept.” Gender and Society 19 (6): 829–859), it is suggested that an ideal Sikh masculine identity is partly informed by a Khalsa discourse, which informs a particular performance of Sikh male identity, whilst also encouraging the surveillance of young men's activities both by themselves and by others. These Sikh masculinities are complex and multiple, rotating to reaffirm, challenge and redefine contextualised notions of hegemonic masculinity within the Sikh diaspora in post-colonial Britain. Such localised Sikh masculinities may both assert male privilege and reap patriarchal dividends (Connell, W. 1995. Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press), resulting in particular British Sikh hegemonic masculinities which seek to shape the performance of masculinity, yet in another context these very same performances of masculinity may also signify a more marginalised masculinity vis-à-vis other dominant hegemonic forms.     

“Don’t you know I own the road?” The link between narcissism and aggressive driving

Aggressive drivers can make driving dangerous. Over 50% of traffic fatalities are caused by aggressive driving. This research tests whether narcissists are more aggressive drivers than other individuals. Narcissists think they are special people who deserve special treatment. When they don’t get the special treatment they think they deserve, narcissists often lash out at others in an aggressive manner. Narcissists might think they “own the road” and can drive anyway they want, and that other drivers should get out of their way. In the article, we conduct three studies to test the link between narcissism and aggressive driving. In Studies 1 (N = 139) and 2 (N = 100), Luxembourgish motorists completed a measure of narcissism and a self-report measure of aggressive driving. In Study 3 (N = 60), American university students completed a measure of narcissism and then completed a driving simulation scenario that contained a number of frustrating elements. Several measures of aggressive driving and road rage were obtained. In all three studies, narcissism was positively related to aggressive driving. A meta-analysis found an average correlation of r = 0.35 across the three studies. This research replicates previous research linking narcissism to aggression, and extends it to a driving context.     

“This isn’t getting easier”: Valuing emotion in development research

This paper explores the importance of ‘mess’ in development research and in particular the emotional mess of research. Through an exploration of my own research with a development education organisation, I argue that capturing and understanding emotion can lead to insights that are not only particularly revealing about the research process and the motivations of the researcher but are also highly informative about the subject area, in this case research in and for development.     

An integrated device to evaluate a driver’s functional state

In the field of cognitive ergonomics, research on car drivers requires multimodal in-vehicle systems for recording not only driving-related behavior, but also contextual information from their surroundings. In addition, reliable information concerning a driver’s functional state should be obtained. In this article, we describe an integrated device simultaneously recording specific physiological data, video recordings of the driver and environment, parameters from the vehicle, and contextual data. Physiological signals from the autonomic nervous system provide objective and quantitative information on the driver’s alertness and his/her ability to process specific driving-related stimuli or other nonspecific information. Consequently, recorded physiological responses can be related to individual driving events. Electrodermal and cardiac activities are sensitive to time-dependent variations in arousal level and to certain external stimuli, so there is great interest in studying drivers’ behavior via measured physiological signals that have been established as suitable behavioral indicators. The present integrated device is capable of processing the relevant indices from raw measured data in real time.     

“Operationalism” in psychotherapy: A possible means of putting a sorry state of theory in better order?

It will be shown in this paper that the study of the actual conduct of psychotherapy, at least in its classical form with a patient speaking his or her mind in any way the patient desires and a therapist helping the patient pursue those thoughts and wishes and conflicts and hopes for better luck in real life than before, is more conducive to agreement among rather different therapists, to clearer reasoning over psychotherapeutic interventions, and to more promising theoretical articulations than anything available in the theoretical texts of psychotherapy.